


of red

by emmamere



Category: Shin Sekai Yori | From the New World
Genre: Amnesia, Angst, Canon Lesbian Relationship, Canonical Character Death, Childhood, Drama, Dystopia, F/F, F/M, Manipulation, Mental Breakdown, Psychological Horror, Psychological Trauma, Tragic Romance, War
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-18
Updated: 2018-05-18
Packaged: 2019-05-08 11:34:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 1,955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14693379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emmamere/pseuds/emmamere
Summary: She felt with their ends the death of everything. She knew, then, that no love from the new world existed. She knew, then, that true life was extinct.All that remained in the new world was red.





	1. 1

In the great, golden splendor of the new world, Saki Watanabe experiences her first crisis.

Sleep beholds terrible wonders. She kneels, knees rubbing the dirt, as milk-white hands hold the back of her neck. The other's hair billows, dappled flaxen by sunbeams that break through the leafy veil above.

But everything else - the lips, the touch, the draping locks - everything else is red.

The girl wakes. The pots above her head swing menacingly, and as her repulsion amplifies, the covers attain a certain dampness.

Saki screams a child's scream and vomits over the side of the bed.


	2. 2

"Is something wrong, Saki? Your Cantus has been a bit poor this week." Maria hovered above the girl's desk as she struck the fatal, inevitable blow.

Saki made the mistake of looking up. Red, billowing, just the same as in her dreams. The egg fell in shame.

Maria cast her friend a concerned glance before tuttering about the mess, finally drifting to the floor to clean it. 

Saki stared, eyes quivering. Maria paused to grab her still wrist. 

Without a word to the instructor or other students, Maria dragged Saki out of the hall. She didn't stop until the schoolbuilding had ended and the great outdoors began. 

It made no difference to Saki. She was confused, and ashamed, and so very, very hopeless - where she was wouldn't change that.

"Saki, wanna go somewhere familiar?"

The sound of Maria's voice, just as sickly sweet as dripping honey, renewed Saki's panic. It wove spindly claws up her pliant throat, and if she weren't in the presence of the most beautiful being on the planet, she might've choked.

Instead she nodded. Maria then, momentarily ceasing her grip on the other's wrist, released a canoe from the schoolyard dock. But it was there once again as she helped a dull-eyed Saki board. Her fingers were too gentle, too white and soft, to cause harm, but Saki knew that she could feel them squeezing her heart.


	3. 3

Saki clings to the redhead as they slowly make their way down the canal. Maria is humming softly, smiling brightly, and the other feels privileged to see it.

"Saki, do you remember all of the fun places we used to go to as kids?" 

Both technically and societally, they were still kids, but there was an unspoken acknowledgement between all members of the group that they had seen too much to remain as so.

Saki offers a weak smile, nothing much more than a slight upturn of the lips. "Most of them."

Maria's hand found Saki's, tracing over it lightly before entwining the two sets of slender fingers. Saki leaned into the touch.

Maria's silky voice drops to a whisper. Saki strains to distinguish the words.

"We're gonna go somewhere nice to get you feeling better, hmm?"

A shy nod. 

She grows bolder and bolder yet, resolving to clasp Saki's hand tighter and hold both to her chest. Saki marvels as Maria flutters close cerulean eyes, seemingly in tune with the sway of the boat and whisper of the wind.

Making use of an impressively small amount of Cantus, Maria veers the canoe over to an patch of shore flanked by foliage.

Saki follows as Maria weaves through the stretch of woods. She feels the terror that had sunken deep into her heart begin to ebb away with the atmosphere - light cascading through the emerald canopy, the endearing taps of Maria's loose sandals against the earth.

In less than three minutes, the pair reaches a large boulder, ridden with cracks and blanketed by moss. The slope then descended into a small ditch that could barely be considered a cave, yet was by the wide-eyed friend group.

Maria knelt, legs folding, and beckoned Saki to join her. The brunette did so - it was as if the seemingly spacious area hadn't changed at all since they were tiny children. 

The redhead took one last glimpse at her pristine uniform before tumbling down to the dirt with a giggle. Saki started, surprised at her friend's antics. 

Maria laughed in the natural grime of the ditch. "Makes you feel warm inside, right? A place like this, so deep in memory?"

"I think...I think I can feel it," said Saki, and she wasn't even lying. She trampled her garments in the dust, sitting criss-crossed in the shade beside the other girl.

A bird chirped in a nearby tree. Maria reached out to embrace Saki.

Saki rested her chin on the other's shoulder, worries fading in the warmth of Maria's hold and the familiarity of the hiding place that had provided refuge earlier in their lives.


	4. 4

Maria and Saki walk haphazardly on the stones that mark a canal.

"Was that fun?"

Saki resolves. "Yes."

Maria hums. She stretches a leg to dip her toes in the clear water of the canal.

"Have you ever tried it?"

The brunette looks away, eyes downcast. Her frame shivers once. 

Maria whispers something that sounds almost like 'it isn't you'.

One step closes the distance, and their lips meet in a chaste kiss. Though brief, Saki relishes the feeling, the taste lingering long after they has pulled away.

She had anticipated it so fervently that it barely registers as a shock.

"I love you." The words rush from Saki's throat, glad to be freed of their bounds. "Do you love me?"

Maria clasps their palms together. Girlish fingers entertwine. "I think...I can."

Saki nods. Her tear-endowed prayers had been answered. She would not risk infringement, nor the responding rejection, to taste again the strawberries.

They disengage and set for their respective homes. A smile ghosts Saki's face as she crosses into the residential sector, clothes flickering with the amber pre-dusk light.

Elsewhere, a home decays, and the brilliance of Shun Aonuma sinks into a bottomless black.


	5. 5

Saki sleeps again, and a horrific dream awaits her. It, too, was as real as a dream could be.

An overturned canoe mars a cornfield. The canals are overrun by blank-eyed carcasses, floating belly-up in the dark waters.

Saki sprints through the maze of wheat, the force of her run so great, it was more akin to a gallop, but she is never fast enough.

The trees cease their swaying only for their roots to be ripped from the ground. Dry tendrils spring into action, expanding and casting a hellish willow as they ensnare flesh.

The pallid arm of Maria shows itself under the red moonbeams. A haunted smile splits her face, crimson hair glowing like starlight. 

She points, and the sky shatters.

"Forever?"

The world develops an unwanted haze. Saki calls upon the deepest of her Cantus in a futile attempt to reach him in time.

As always, she is unsuccessful. 

Affection for the dead boy, the one with the blackest of hair and a name she can no longer recall, vanishes with the wind. The scarlet moon is unwillingly pushed under the rippling horizon.

In its place, the all-consuming sun, rising violently now that no barriers encompass it.

Saki's beloved romances disappear and all she is left with is red.


	6. 6

Everything is as it always was.

Saki's sense of foreboding pervades, but she has nothing to base it upon and gradually calms in the schoolroom. 

After all, she can see Maria and Mamoru quietly chatting, and Satoru is as he always is - goofing off.

She lays her chin on her palm and gives a small sigh. The cup on the desk in front of her slowly stirs, as it should.

Then the cup is obscured by a curtain of cerise. Saki shifts her gaze to see Maria's face, grinning impishly before pecking her on the cheek. Her feet never touch the floor.

"M-maria!" Saki stammers as the cup overflows.

The girl thrusts one slim finger before her nose, poking it and giggling. 

Saki almost laughs but is stopped by a flash of a forgotten image; the same finger pointing under harsh moonlight as the roof of the world falls.

Saki gapes, pupils dilating. The cup's contents spill over the side of her desk in waves.

"Saki?"

The brunette propels out of her chair and dashes for the door, only to be collapsed by another pang of confusion.

She sits despondently in a 'w' in the ground, hands raised to cover her ears and the remnants of speech seething out from clenched teeth. The instructor and other students have paused at the scene.

Maria's fingertips find Saki's shoulders and Saki  
[I]screams.

Any and all nearby windows shatter with the vehemence of her Cantus-enhanced cry. Maria instantly recoils, but the shrieks do not stop.

Saki sinks her nails into her scalp, causing rivulets of blood to soak into her hair. The instructor gives a wordless incantation and she slumps forward, cries only then dying.

Maria takes another step back as she remembers the vacuous face of the black-haired boy.


	7. 7

The mother left, in a flurry of robes, and Maria was left to tuck her lover into bed. The covers became curtains as they were raised.

Saki fought the urge to ask why her sister had reappeared, hair splayed across the floor like the devil's fan - she was terrified of what other phantoms she might see.

"My dear, if I do not return, could you always remember me?"

Maria's voice dismembered the greatest of Saki's inner fortresses. The drapes were forgotten in love; earth met sky, and the two girls shared the last kiss of the millenium.

"Why would you stay?"

Maria froze, face dark and troubled. The evil whisperings of the adults still rung in her ears. She could not deny the falsehood of their peace.

The world lapsed into bitter silence as Maria ascended into the night's looming, black sky.


	8. 8

Maria concentrates her Cantus and takes to the air. She hovers over the grass, bare feet glimpsing the dew.

She floats in a clearing lined with dark trees and punctuated by a rectangular hovel. The place is colored with camel and tawny, as if the tired coat of a jaguar.

Black trunks distort and their brittle leaves form a canopy over a dilapidated cinema backdrop. The clown is wrought with the holes of bullets. There, Maria can see the into shapeless expanse of woods to another house, maroon and haunting, stunted by the drop of an emerald hill.

Maria clutches her arms to her chest as they erupt with goosebumps. A basketball, discarded by the hoop, rolls underneath her; she slinks the short distance to the pavement in belated welcome of it.

Maria absorbs the contents of the backyard; a now-green pool rising seven feet above the dirt; a trampoline dotted with tears; even the filthy pen of a sickly dog. The imperfection is something she has never seen in the new world.

The bitter scent of smoke leaks over the barely-hinged door of the rectangle home. Maria is both intrigued and repulsed, and although an adult's would have, her nose does not wrinkle.

Maria steps inside. The smog, guilty, recedes through the shutters to the open air.

The room is dimly lit and overrun by squelching mold. A boy sits in a chair, gaze averted. His face could not be distinguished by Maria - nor by himself.

Maria walks - returns - to him. Grime oozes beneath her feet, but she dares not lift them.

"You." Her voice is loud and clear.

The boy turns. In his ghostly skull hangs two ink-black orbs. In his red-veined hands lies a featureless mask. 

"Everyone is real here," says Shun. Crumbles of bone fall to the void under his chair as he speaks.

She is silent.

"Here, I can see you for who you are."

He looks and sees none but her crimson silhouette, alien and angry.

"You are of red, Maria."


End file.
